


and there's nothing wrong, but I need you

by i_am_not_a_bird



Category: Black Widow (Movie 2020), Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: F/M, I swear I'm not TRYING to make an AU I just hate Natasha/Bruce, Natasha Romanov Is Not A Robot, Natasha Romanov-centric, Not Avengers: Age of Ultron (Movie) Compliant, POV Natasha Romanov, Past Bucky Barnes/Natasha Romanov, otherwise it's completely canon compliant, presently it's complicated, winterwidow - Freeform
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-11-27
Updated: 2020-12-02
Packaged: 2021-03-10 01:20:19
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 3,493
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27735982
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/i_am_not_a_bird/pseuds/i_am_not_a_bird
Summary: Another Winterwidow MCU retelling fic.Natasha has kept most of her previous encounters with the Winter Soldier (and her personal feelings about him) under a tight lid so far. Steve has needed support from her, not more complicated feelings and history about his old best friend, so it only makes sense that support would come first.But now that Hydra's been dealt with, Natasha has had nothing but time on her hands. And she's decided it's time to start digging up some old ghosts.
Relationships: James "Bucky" Barnes & Natasha Romanov, James "Bucky" Barnes & Steve Rogers, James "Bucky" Barnes/Natasha Romanov
Comments: 3
Kudos: 15





	1. a rebellious winter soldier and his spider

**Author's Note:**

> Title from I, Neitzche by Fenne Lily. Yes, I know, it's a weird choice. 
> 
> This is part of a batch of Black Widow-centric fics & snippets of fics that I wrote to build up hype for myself for the movie. I didn't intend to post any of them, but the movie's delayed so far in the future that I don't have to worry about messing with canon anymore, and I needed something to edit to get the Nanowrimo juices flowing. So have this and hopefully some similar fics soon, if I get around to finishing those ones, too. Hope you enjoy.

Black Widow is an expert at tracking people down, particularly those who would rather not be found. She knows how to drop in unseen, undisturbed, and complete her mission, because she has done so countless times in order to succeed in the Red Room.

That is how, one chilly, frozen night, she is able to sneak into a safe room in Nunavut, one she was not supposed to know about and absolutely never supposed to go to.

_Oh, but he used to sneak into her room so many long nights, so many years ago. Two young idiots who would one day be among the greatest assassins in the world, taking a moment from their missions to remind themselves how it felt to actually care about someone. Natasha remembers it._

_But those memories were wiped from the Winter Soldier's mind at the end of the mission, before he was put back into cryofreeze; it was a necessary precaution when he began to show signs of rebellion._

The room appears empty at first, but Natasha knows, from a combination of the leads and sources she has picked up and her own experience with James Barnes, that he is here somewhere. She snoops around slowly, carefully watching her step, and finds a small book on one of the shelves near the only window. There are a few hasty notes and scribbles in it, writing Natasha can barely make out in the dim light, but the main thing is the photographs tucked in between the pages. There is Captain America, there is Steve Rogers (before and after the serum changed him), and there are snippets of her face and of Sam Wilson.Those ones feel more like afterthoughts.

Natasha finds fragments of paragraphs that must have been taken from the Smithsonian exhibit, and something twists in her heart when she reads them.

She sets the book back on the shelf and creeps through the tiny apartment. Aside from the little book, there is not much in the way of personal touch: some food in the cabinets (all just the necessities) and some furniture, but nothing that looks new. It all appears to have been there before he got there. The whole thing is drab, gray, and very practical; if he needs to go, she assumes there is very little he would have to grab besides what is already on his back. Natasha figured as much, and she's briefly glad she didn't tell Steve where she was planning on going.

She turns her back to the room to poke through another shelf, forgetting where she is for a moment. And that's when she hears a throat clears a few feet behind her.

Natasha would curse if she had not been trained to always maintain composure. She is not in any immediate danger-- people who intend to murder someone usually do not communicate their presence beforehand-- but she would have liked to have the upper hand for this conversation.

"What are you doing here?"

His voice is rough, scratchy, and low-pitched. It's clear he hasn't needed to use it for a long while. Natasha turns around slowly, and there is the Winter Soldier, or the silhouette of him at least. Tall, dark, and clearly very unkempt.

"I was investigating something," she says vaguely.

He gives her a once-over. It's dark in the room, but the moon is full, and the moonlight pouring in through the window will probably highlight her silhouette. That's not a lot of information for a person to go on. Perhaps at the very most, he could see that her hair is red.

"They called you Natasha," he says in the same scratchy voice.

Surprised, she nods.

"But your name is Natalia."

_"Natalia Romanova," he had said with his arms wrapped around her shoulders, testing the name out on his tongue. She could feel his throat rumble against her forehead as he spoke, making her feel safe._

_"That's not fair," she fake pouted at him. "You have a name for me. I don't have anything I can call you."  
_

_"That's because I don't have a name." There was a moment of reflective silence. "Maybe I did at one point. But they would have erased that, too."_

_"That's what they want," she murmured. "The people at Hydra. They don't want you to have a name, because that would mean you have an identity. That you are a person, not just a Winter Soldier, not just one of their killing machines." She hesitated for a moment. "They want the same thing for me, I think, at the Red Room. Although less so. It's confusing sometimes, what they actually want from me, because my memories don't always seem to line up. But I know they've always wanted to control me."_

_She thought of the dehumanizing ceremony at the end of her training, of the whisper of_ no loose ends _in her ear before they performed the operation. But then the Winter Soldier placed a gentle, stroking hand on her cheek, and she fell back to reality._

_"They want to control who we are with, too. And look how well that's working out for them, Natalia," he whispered._

Stupid words, she had believed they were even at the time, spoken by a stupid, lovesick girl to the only person who had ever shown her real affection in years. She had believed it was good when Hydra found their misbehaving Winter Soldier and wiped his memory, so that she could clear the thistledown from her head and focus on her own missions. Heartbreaking, but good. The Red Room didn't have any use for a rebellious Winter Soldier and his spider.

A million years later, Clint had taught her that she was wrong.

"Natalia _was_ my name," she explains to him. "But I go by Natasha now. A more American name." She eases forward slowly. "And you... You're James Barnes."

He cocks his head. "That's what it says my name is. The museum exhibit at the Smithsonian, I mean. They show a man that looks like me."

"And what do you think?"

"I think..."

There's a pregnant pause, and Natasha really wishes she could see his expression. Perhaps she could find a way to get a real light on. If the bare-bones decoration in the middle of nowhere is anything to go off of, it's possible there are no working lights in the apartment.

"That Bucky," he says eventually, "the one from the 40s... he... he's dead. I don't know how to be that Bucky anymore. So it doesn't really matter if I ever was him in the first place."

His voice is raw but matter-of-fact. She can tell he has been considering this for some time.

"I don't think that makes a difference to Steve Rogers," Natasha says gently.

"No." There's a clipped sound, almost like a laugh, if Natasha thought he even could laugh. "Does it make a difference to you?"

"No." She says it right away, and she shakes her head as she speaks. "I know the version of you that I once knew is dead, anyway."

_A shot at the tires sent them almost careening off the cliff. She thought she was saving the engineer from an attempted assassination, a killer who had simply not yet had Natasha Romanoff to reckon with, who was underestimating her ability to protect._

_She still remembers the feeling of the bullet ripping through her own flesh, flying through the air and striking the man behind her dead, proving her wrong._

James remembers the name she went by when she was in the Red Room when they were together, despite Hydra's memory wipe. So he must remember what happened at Odessa as well.

"If that's really what you believe, why'd you come here?" he says. Some of the life is starting to come back to his voice, and he sounds... sturdier, almost. He speaks with more conviction. "I can't be the person I used to be for you. All I can be is this, Natalia. And all I am is an ex-Hydra agent."

"Well, look at me," Natasha says wryly. "Look at everything I've done. I have no reason to believe that there's such a thing as lost causes, James."

Natasha thinks she can see him flinch at the sound of his old name. "I tried to kill you," he says bluntly.

She doesn't look away, even if it's too dark for him to tell she's staring at him. "I don't believe that. Or at the very least, I don't believe you tried very hard. If you ever actually wanted me dead, I would be dead already."

"I'm not so sure." He turns, and the light catches his eyes-- slate gray and warmly familiar. "I think you should leave."

His tone is clipped. She's not helping anything here, she realizes. She's not getting to him at all. Natasha's honestly not really sure why she decided to come in the first place.

Neither of them protest when she silently slips out the back door.

Two weeks later, she returns to the safe house just to double-check. Her suspicions are correct: the Winter Soldier has vanished again. He's left everything behind except for the book. That must be a prized possession of his, then; the one personal belong he has in this strange new world. Memories of the past, as he tries to piece together who he is and how he got there. Memories of Steve, and memories of her.

Natasha does not tell Steve about any of this. Barnes is not ready to see him, anyway. Steve is too much of an emotional wildcard when it comes to his old friend, despite the fact that he is usually so clearheaded and driven. He has proven that much to her on the Helicarrier. It would be better to wait to tell him anything until she has a clearer grasp of what's going on inside Barnes' head.


	2. the superhero civil war

A year or so later, after Ultron has shaken all their worlds apart, a UN building is bombed and many innocents, including the visiting king of Wakanda, are killed. James Barnes is accused of killing them.

_"They called you Natasha. But your name is Natalia."_

_He knows. He remembers. All it took was his world crashing down upon him for him to remember who she is, but he knows, he knows, he knows._

Logically, Natasha is aware that it possible it was Barnes' doing. While it was true that he had snapped out of the brainwashing, he still had Hydra's coding in his head, and he was still capable of becoming the Winter Soldier if there was someone there to prompt it. Natasha prides herself on her logical thinking, and she knows for a fact that this is very possible.

But some part of her, the part that felt something fluttery and dangerous wake up in her chest when she heard him say _Natalia_ , does not believe he is even capable of doing something like this. Of going down that path again.

Natasha is hoping privately that that feeling is right.

The others track him down to Bucharest, and Natasha feels a twinge of disappointment that it took the bombing of that UN building for them to be able to find his next hiding spot at all. He's covering his tracks, better than he was last time. Or maybe it's that Natasha is not trying as hard. 

A year ago, Natasha would have sworn she had started tracking him all for Steve's sake, because she could tell that knowing his best friend was out there all alone was killing him. She could have made up a thousand excuses for why she was keeping it a secret: she didn't want to disappoint him when the trail inevitably went cold; she didn't feel like he was ready to see Barnes in such a damaged, fragile state; she didn't feel like Barnes was ready to see him. But none of that was really true. She was tracking Barnes for her own sake, on the off chance that he recognized her or even maybe wanted her back. She had her answers now, and she couldn't afford to continue on with the mission, wasting resources like that just for her own emotional sake. It would be better to stay out of it and leave Barnes' fate to the others; Natasha couldn't afford to let herself have feelings like this.

The Black Widow believes that a family is for children and love is a fairy tale.

_Once believed?_

Still believes.

She remains firmly opposed to the mission to bring Barnes in. Her goal is to keep the Avengers together, whatever that takes, and for her, she feels like that means staying on the right side of the law this time around. Staying away from him. It's time she let him go, anyway. Predictably, though, Steve doesn't listen to her requests to stay out of it, and the next time Natasha sees the Winter Soldier in person, it's on the other side of an airport-turned battlefield.

He doesn't act like he recognizes her, and neither does she.

They almost make it through to the Quinjet. They tell her there is an army of Winter Soldiers ready to kill, just like Barnes was. (Is.) They say they have to stop them, regardless of what the Sokovia Accords say, regardless of what Tony says. Natasha knows there is no point in fighting them. They're two of the most stubborn men she's ever known, and she's starting to realize just how wrong she played this whole thing.

"I'm gonna regret this," she says, as T'Challa writhes on the ground from her Widow's Bite, and then they're gone.


	3. weak spot

For reasons Natasha will never understand, even after everything her and the Avengers have done, they will always be welcome in Wakanda.

(It's probably because T'Challa is a better person than Natasha.)

She's not there when they put him back in cryofreeze; that is a matter between James and Steve. Privately, she is afraid that she wouldn't even be invited. But she comes there later. She is allowed to see him on account of the fact that she is a friend of Steve.

Natasha doesn't have anything particular she wants to do, and she's not one hundred percent sure why she came. According to Shuri, they think they know how to get the Hydra programming out of his head, but they're not quite prepaid to unfreeze him yet. All she can really do is watch. Somehow, being away, knowing he remembered her name but not knowing what else he remembered, was eating away at her.

The glass is fogged over, but she can still barely see his face. He's shaved since she last saw him.

_Natasha had watched him all those years ago. Back then it was because they made her, not because she wanted to. She needed to see the consequences of her own actions, after all, so she was forced to watch as they took her Soldier away from her. She watched them torture him, wipe his memory, and then finally, mercifully, put him back into cryofreeze, where he would sleep in the silence for God knows how long._

_They didn't try to hold her back when she pawed at the glass. She couldn't have broken it anyway, so why bother?_

Natasha had always believed that, if she was given the choice, she wouldn't have watched as they put him into cryofreeze. But now that she's been given the choice, she knows she wishes she could have seen him when he went in. It makes her feel weak.

Of course, back then, she had believed with utter conviction that he was never coming back.

Now, she has something dangerously close to hope.

She visits again a few weeks later, wanting to check up on him, and finds that he is already awake. T'Challa did not tell her this, but maybe that was on purpose. She would have left then and there if he had not already caught sight of her lingering in the doorway.

"Natasha," he says brightly.

"James," she says cautiously.

She wants to leave, but there's something in her, something like a magnet, that always seems to gravitate towards James Barnes.

"Checking in?" Shuri asks. "I figured Steve or a friend of his would want to see how he's doing. You can tell Captain America that he is in tip top shape. It has gone surprisingly well."

"That's right," Natasha says slowly. "A friend of Steve's." As Shuri turns to leave and give them some privacy, she asks, "Tip top shape?"

"They think I'm clear." James' excitement from a moment earlier seems to have been put on guard, and he looks at her with a more cautious expression. "No more worries about Hydra's programming."

"And what do you think?"

He blinks, seeming a little baffled by the question. "I mean, I trust Shuri. And she clearly knows what she's doing."

Natasha's crossed the room over towards him. "What do you remember?"

"Everything," he says. "Everything they wanted me to forget, at least. My family. Steve. Natalia," he adds, his tone shifting. His eyes drop down to her hip, and she can almost feel a phantom pain burn in her scar. "Everything I've done."

_He didn't even have the courtesy to recognize her. There wasn't a flash on his face of,_ Oh, hey, that's the woman I used to sleep with. _Because Hydra had drilled all of that out of him and replaced it with a cold, clear focus on his mission, and at the moment, his mission was to kill the engineer no matter who stood in his way. Natasha was not a part of that. Natasha was only an obstacle to him._

She shakes her head to clear out the cobwebs, and asks softly, "What else were you supposed to have done, James?"

He bites his lower lip, the Cupid's bow of the upper lip jutting out.

"You couldn't have resisted them," she presses on. "It'd be foolish to think otherwise. You were programmed not to."

"I could have least recognized you," he says morosely.

"After Hydra wiped your memory?"

"I recognized Steve." His voice is hollow.

"I am not your best friend," she says forcefully. "I have not known you since we were both children. There is no reason for you to expect yourself to recognize someone who was only a very short chapter in your life. And it's not like I was giving you any favors, either. Steve wanted you to recognize him."

"I still hurt you."

"And you're different now," she says. "You regret it. You've apologized. Let's move on. If you plan to mope over every person you've ever killed, then we're going to be here for a while."

He hangs his head, and Natasha gets the impression that might be exactly what his plans are.

She's about to turn and leave-- Natasha absolutely did not sign up for this today-- but his voice startles her into stillness.

"Did you mope over the people who killed?"

She pauses. Chews on her lip. Doesn't turn around.

"That's different."

"How so?"

"I wasn't brainwashed into doing it. I just did it."

There's silence for a moment. He seems to be considering it.

"I don't think that's different at all, Natalia. Natasha," he corrects himself.

She turns around to face him. She always did like the way he said her name. "That doesn't make any sense."

"It's like," he says, gesticulating vaguely. "Well. The old Bucky's dead, isn't he? The person who fought in the war. The person who was Captain America's sidekick, who was a Howling Commando. He's gone. Right? Maybe the old Natalia is dead, too, the one who did all those things. Maybe we're not getting either of them back."

Her eyes sting like she could cry if she wanted to, and she blinks it away in surprise. "I don't know if that's the same thing. I don't know if she's really dead, or maybe just waiting."

"Waiting for what?"

"For things to go bad."

"They're not going to."

His posture is open, his hands out. An invitation. _Come sit with me,_ he's saying. His eyes are the brightest they've been in a while, and she remembers why slate gray had felt like fire to her once, instead of the cool distance it does now. _Come feel safe with me. You wanted to be here. You came, for whatever reason. Maybe nothing's okay, but surely we can just pretend for at least a moment?_

_Oh, but they had pretended all those years ago. Whispered promises in each others ears in the cold Russian night. And all it had amounted to was a broken heart, another in a series of memory wipes, and proof that the Black Widow did in fact have a weak spot, in the shape of James Buchanan Barnes._

Natasha breathes in, too sharply, and turns and walks out the door.


End file.
